The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide

SEO

Customers are looking for the best products and services near them, and they want quick answers to everything. Especially now in the COVID-19 pandemic, people are trying to often reach businesses online than offline, so if your business shows up at the time when local customers are looking up, you’ve scored a goal. A website allows you to target the world audience. Local SEO, on the contrary, is focused on ranking higher in your local area. For people to pick you out of all the local businesses that offer the same products and services you need to invest in local SEO. Your business has higher chances of surviving these difficult times if it is found easily by your local audience.

Let us explain what local SEO is all about and help you make your website findable in your area.

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is a branch of SEO that focuses on optimizing a website in order to increase traffic, leads, awareness from local search. Content, on-page optimizations, and link building all with a focused, localized intent are part of these efforts.

You could have a local grocery store or a dentist’s clinic or a plumbing service or a car garage that operates throughout a certain geographic area, you want your web pages to rank for search queries performed by a local audience. So, you must optimize your website for that area.

Why is local SEO important?

Optimizing your business for local search is important especially if you are a brick-and-mortar business serving specific towns, cities, regions, and even states. Let us share some fascinating statistics to highlight just how huge SEO is for local businesses.

46% of all searches in Google have “local intent” (Search Engine Roundtable).
29% of all Google SERPs contain a local pack in the results (RankRanger).
76% of consumers that search for something local on their phone visits a store that day (Google).

So, it becomes obvious that local searches make up a huge chunk of the SEO world. When done right, local SEO allows people to find your business easily and quickly, bringing them a step closer to a transaction.

How does local SEO work?

Local SEO works moreover like a normal Google search. When someone searches on Google, it scans through its index to provide the best result for that query. However, what makes local SEO different is that Google uses a different set of ranking factors to rank the local search results.

When you optimize for local searches, you need to focus on-

Let Google know that you’re located in a certain area and want to be found by customers in that area.
Creating local landing pages and helping people locate your store address.
Having the right Local Business Schema markup that will help you make clear to Google that you have a local business and what area(s) you serve.
Creating a Google My Business account with all relevant details.
Add industry-relevant and local links to your website.
Optimizing your site for local SEO strategy, citations and even word-of-mouth and print brochures.
The sentiment of online reviews.
Keywords used in online reviews.
Shares on social media
Number of “check-ins” at that location

All the above practices contribute to local SEO, you can implement these practices to optimize your website for the local search results and make a good earning with a little effort.

Summing-up

Want to rank locally with your business website? Do you own a (small) business and local clients? And are you tired of seeing your competition show up higher? Hire Shergroup specialists for your business. We use research, analysis, and the latest tools to improve your website’s search results on Google and other search engines and make it accessible to your local audience.

Shergroup has started offering package deals for our client’s convenience, you may choose the package that best suits your needs and budget. Our Search Engine experts will leave no stone unturned to help you rank higher locally and in Google Maps without breaking a sweat!